FISSURE

FISSURE: A kitchen-sink city-state RPG in a post-apocalyptic world

Background

Before the apocalypse, there was a Golden Age. Or at least a Gilded Age-the records are unclear and often twisted for the ends of various strongmen. Mankind reached impossible heights with its mastery of the sciences, learning more and more about the universe. Laws of physics could be bent, ignored, or even broken. Or so they thought.

It is unknown what caused the ripples to open, but one day, reality buckled. Cities were erased, continents changed, and things appeared. Creatures of magic and legend. Powerful aliens and alternate races. Long-dead species. Earth has become a patchwork of abrupt dimensional

Premise

Players in this game play

Citystate Generation

Core Stats

Technology

Technology has been mankind's birthright for millenia. It has been a way to even the odds against nature, and with all the new and dangerous things floating around

Wacky Things

Super-mutants? Atomic Dinosaurs? Aztec Giant Death robots made from the souls of forsaken children?

Industrial Base

Your ability to make things with your dudes.

Population

How many dudes you have.

Education

Education is a measure of your people's average education and schooling. Education is critical if one wishes to use Advanced units or more powerful, formalized magics.

Traits

Traits are primarily what make one city-state different from another. Two nations with identical core stats and different traits are very different nations and often will have very different

Motivations

Each nation has a core motivation. This motivation defines what the nation primarily seeks to do and gives the nation bonuses.

Population Traits

Population traits alter the functioning of the nation's population. This can be something as simple as particularly loyal (or lawless) people, or something as powerful as "everyone is a space gargoyle from space."

Terrain Traits

Terrain traits alter the environment you live in.

Affinity Traits

Affinity traits are traits which alter the expressions of the affinities.

Adventurers

Blah blah something about adventurers who go around looting shit for you blah blah.

Unit Types

Simple units are units which need minimal technical education. Guys with AK-47s for example. Advanced units, like tanks, powersuits, and giant robots, are units which need significant amounts of technical understanding.

Generic

Militia: Guys with patchwork armor and weapons. In this lawless post-apocalyptic world, often double as cops. Militia normally cost nothing to have-they're a last-ditch method of defending your city-state, but militia with special abilities (often representing internal security forces of some sort)

Troopers: Troopers are formally trained and inducted light infantry, armed with basic (but often standardized) weaponry and

Cavalry: Guys on horses, dinosaurs, or whatever. Even high-tech polities make use of these, because hypercapacitor chargers and microfusion plants are few and far between and a guy on a horse with a gun can move faster than a guy with a gun who doesn't have a horse.

Unwieldy: Because of their size and momentum, cavalry are difficult to use effectively in enclosed, broken, or heavily built-up terrain.

Technological

Battlesuits: Battlesuits combine the protection of light armored vehicles with the size and mobility of infantry. Battlesuits are formally particularly heavy examples of power armor, standing around 2 to 3 meters tall and massing anywhere from a quarter of a ton to a ton. Half-vehicle, half-infantry, battlesuits are often prized possessions because of their brutal effectiveness in close quarters.

Advanced: Battlesuits require high-tech maintenance and infrastructure and thus are Advanced units, requiring technically savvy personnel.

Hardened: Battlesuits are resistant to critical hits and thus are difficult to defeat with inferior foes.

Super-Strength: Battlesuits have enhanced strength and are extremely potent in close quarters.

Armor: Tanks are a fairly rare sight on post-apocalyptic Earth because of their upkeep requirements and the fact that the vast majority of things don't need tanks to kill. An Armor unit is maybe ten tanks (and that's assuming they're relatively cheap, light ones) and for the vast majority of threats is an unstoppable behemoth that can roll over almost anything.

Magical

Mystic Beast: People with the power of magic can often

Elementals:

Summoned: Elementals are summoned creatures and require mages to keep them in control.

Affinity: Elementals have an elemental affinity and are resistant to attacks which are reminiscent of that affinity.

Immunity: Elementals are nearly immune to simple weapons. You need advanced weapons, ridiculous superpowers, or

Superpowered

Brutes: Mutants (or cyborgs or transgenes) with absurd strength and toughness, Brutes are sort of like a step in between battlesuits and regular soldiers. They're not as tough, but they're more agile, and definitely stronger.

Super-Strength: Brutes have enhanced strength and are extremely potent in close quarters.

Agile: Brutes can jump very high and scale nearly vertical walls, giving them improved mobility and defense in tight terrain.